Africa’s Demographic Challenges. An advocacy and awareness raising campaign
High population dynamics is one of the biggest obstacles in fighting extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. In this region a lot of women get more children than they wish to get as in many cases they don’t have access to modern methods of family planning. Universal access to respective information and services is essential to reduce poverty and to enable a sustainable development in Africa. Therefore, increasing investments in family planning and Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) is necessary.
The project “Africa’s demographic challenges” is an advocacy and awareness raising campaign on this topic. It targets strategically chosen groups from the media, civil society and the general public as well as political decision makers in Germany, Austria and Hungary. A comprehensive research study will be produced within the action. It will be discussed with experts from all over the world at an international conference in autumn 2011.
Reproductive Health for All
An advocacy and awareness raising campaign to promote
universal access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH)
as a key target to reaching the Millennium Development
Goals.
Official Development Assistance (ODA). Universal access to SRH is an important issue for European development aid policies, and strong leadership of the European Union is indispensable. The EU has proven its vital role in negotiations during the Cairo +10 process and at the World Summit in 2005 and ensured global commitment and progress concerning people’s SRHR.
Continued European leadership is essential in the present global setting. The political commitments on these issues in the member states play a crucial role. Continuous advocacy at national and European level, specifically on SRHR, is therefore necessary.
The support for development strategies and policies for poverty reduction is of crucial importance in all 25 European member states. European countries show differences in history of development co-operation policies. In some European countries the issue of development co-operation is quite new; other European countries show a long history of development aid. It is therefore of great importance to build up the capacity of civil society and forge political commitment especially in the new member states to do advocacy on important development issues such as SRHR in order to enhance efforts of the EU in the fight against poverty.
India - Peace Starts at Home. Men Included!
A Project Against Violence Against Women
“Men have strength, but not to hit,” is the message of an anti-violence campaign and awareness training in New Delhi and Chennai which we have developed in cooperation with our Indian partner Archana Kapoor and her NGO SMART.
“Peace Starts at Home” was established in October 2007. The initiative, which is supported by the Austrian Ministry for Social and Consumer Protection, is a pilot project for positive male participation and action.
In the first round, local and international experts were brought together in Delhi for a workshop where they brainstormed on strategies. A training manual was compiled based on their ideas and on the analysis of our survey of families affected by violence. Subsequently, social workers and NGO employees were trained through courses with the objective of working together with men in the region to find constructive ways to combat violence.
“Men make peace, this time at home and not in the international arena” is the slogan of the campaign in India which was brought into being under the terms of consciousness-education projects.
In November 2009 SWI board member will do the next field trip to India. Reports on the project should be online in January.
Learning to Live Together
A Research Project on Muslim and Non-Muslim Students, Parents, and Teachers in Austria
On behalf of the Federal Ministry for Education, Art, and Culture we conducted two research projects: Lived School Partnerships: For a Culture of Encounters in School. Intercultural Parent-Teacher Cooperation and Learning to Live Together in School. Students with a History of Migration in Austria.
The goal of the research projects was to document the daily realities of students aged 14-18 with migratory Muslim backgrounds in Austria as well as to uncover deficits and prejudices. Non-Islamic students in the same age range but without a history of migration were also questioned as a control group.
Individual and group discussions provided insight into the adolescents’ worlds. The guiding research questions: what does these young people’s social environment look like? Where do they position themselves? How do they get along with their classmates? How are interactions in school? What are the socio-culturally determined differences between Muslim students and those without a Muslim background? How do they organize their day-to-day activities? What role does religion play in their daily understanding of life, in their value construction, and in public? How much influence do their parents have?
The second part of the study concerned the interaction between parents and students with histories of migration and the students’ teachers. For some time, articles and reports on how to work together across cultural lines in school as well as the interaction between educational institutions and parents have dominated the discussion in both the public sphere and in the field of education.
Schools are beginning to play a growing role in current discussions of migration. Communication between teachers and the parents of students with a migratory background is increasingly being defined as the “missing link” and critical factor for successfully living together. Surveys clearly show the trend among parents of children who have migrated in the past to appear less frequently at parent-teacher meetings and at other school events. Mothers are often invisible and therefore not contact persons when it comes to daily school activities, and fathers tend to avoid interaction with teachers, especially if they are female. This point is a critical signal for the concerned children in regard to general acceptance of women’s equality. Female teachers are sometimes confronted by male youths with a history of migration, who openly voice their critical views of women and display macho tendencies, and who generally have issues interacting with female peers.
The goal of this study was to identify and address these problems, and to determine strategies to positively overcome the issues. You will soon find a summary of the study’s findings on our homepage.
Austria - Fair Share in Career and at Home
Family Future Trends – The Future of Living Together
This automn, SWI in co-operation with Women without Borders is conducting an Austria-wide online survey about the reconciliation of work and family. The questionnaire highlights daily realities for men and women in the context of family and work and deals with the reasons for choosing certain household models, wishes, and the actual implementation of various forms of cohabitation. The “Fair Share” study will expose the failures of work-life balance. A total of 1000 employed men and women between the ages of 25 and 45 will be questioned. To finish the study, we will also conduct 30 in-depth interviews and conversations with experts.
Fathers take paternity leave, women head companies. But such mothers and fathers are not the rule, they are rather an exception. And equality between men and women exists only in theory: despite the fact that over 50% of graduates in almost all fields are women, it is still primarily men who are at the helm of Austrian firms. And while company bosses are frequently fathers, successful women have to decide between children and a career. Mastering the double burden of family and work is no simple task, especially if only one half of the partnership has to do so on her own. The desire of change is present in both men and women, but where is the implementation? Why does the reconciliation of work of family in Austrian society fail?
3rd Millennium Muslim Man
An action-oriented research project to facilitate the understanding of male Muslims and non-Muslim youth in Austria including experiences from England, France and Germany.
Over 15 million Muslims live in the European Union, and the majority is under 30. According to estimates of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, the Muslim population of Europe will double by 2.25. Social tensions and security fears regarding the rapidly growing Muslim population are leading domestic issues across Europe.
Austria, a country that seems to live superficially in line with its Muslim population, is the appropriate territory to take a look behind the scenes and to address this generation of young male Muslims directly. We seek preventive measures before pent-up frustrations, exclusion – whether perceived or tangible, and anticipated feelings of indignity lead to tension and, possibly, violent conflict. The voices of the Muslim youth, especially that of the young men, are either inaudible or clouded by the declarations and actions of a small group of radical Muslim activists.
The young male generation must be concertedly included in this cultural dialogue. To achieve this requisite, the realities of Muslim men between he ages of 15 and 25 will be documented and will be contrasted with comparable groups of Austrian youth to identify and discuss points of tangency, discrepancies, and conflict.